hawkmoth

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The partnerships between flowering plants and the animals that pollinate them are some of the most familiar in the natural world. The active nature of animals typically casts the plants as the passive partners in this alliance, but in reality, they’re just as involved. That becomes particularly apparent when the animals renege on their partnership.…

This is the fourth of eight posts on evolutionary research to celebrate Darwin’s bicentennial. Charles Darwin was a visionary in more ways than one. In 1862, Darwin was studying a Malagasy orchid called Angraecum sesquipedale, whose nectar stores lie inaccessibly at the bottom of a 30cm long spur (tube). Darwin predicted that the flower was…